O my Lord, I am not eloquent.
The objections made to religious service
I. These objections were made after God had given him a full insight into the nature of the service required.
1. The insight given into the nature of this service was infallible.
2. It was forceful.
3. It was sympathetic.
II. These objections frequently arise from an undue consciousness of self.
1. From a consciousness of natural infirmity. This ought to inspire within them a more thorough determination to seek Divine help. Silence is often more eloquent and valuable than speech.
2. From a supposition of moral incapacity. The call of God is calculated to educate all the sublime tendencies of the soul, and renders men fit for the toil allotted to them.
3. That, rather than self, God must be the supreme idea of the soul when about to enter upon religious service. Our hearts should be a temple in which every act of service should be rendered to the infinite.
III. These objections do not sufficiently regard the efficacy of the Divine help that is promised in the service. “Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.”
1. The Divine help is adapted to our natural infirmity. It is far better to have God joined to our infirmity, than to have the eloquent tongue without Him. Thus there are times when an infirmity may be an inestimable advantage to a Christian worker.
2. The Divine help is adapted to our full requirement. God did not merely promise to aid the speech of Moses, but also to teach him what he should say. So in the Christian service of to-day, good men are not merely aided in the line of their natural infirmity, but also along the entire line of their requirement.
IV. These objections are a reflection on the propriety of the Divine selection for the service. “And the Lord said unto him, who hath made man’s mouth,” etc.
1. This method of conduct is ungrateful.
2. Irreverent.
V. These objections do not sufficiently recognize the dignity and honour the service will command.
1. There was the honour of achieving the freedom of a vast nation.
2. There was the honour of conquering a tyrant king.
3. There was the honour of becoming the lawgiver of the world.
VI. These objections are liable to awaken the divine displeasure. “And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.”
1. This anger may be manifested in our removal from the service.
2. This anger may be manifested by the positive infliction of penalty.
3. This anger may occasion our eternal moral ruin.
Learn:
1. Good men ought to know better than to object to the service of God.
2. That in the service of God men find the highest reward.
3. That in the service of God men attain the truest immortality. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Uselessness of mere words
I am tormented with the desire of writing better than I can. I am tormented, say I, with the desire of preaching better than I can. But I have no wish to make fine, pretty sermons. Prettiness is well enough when prettiness is in place. I like to see a pretty child, a pretty flower; but in sermons, prettiness is out of place. To my ear, it would be anything but commendation, should it be said to me, “You have given us a pretty sermon.” If I were put upon trial for my life, and my advocate should amuse the jury with tropes and figures, or bury his arguments beneath a profusion of flowers of his rhetoric, I would say to him, “Tut, man, you care more for your vanity, than for my hanging. Put yourself in my place--speak in view of the gallows--and you will tell your story plainly and earnestly.” I have no objections to a lady winding a sword with ribbons, and studding it with roses as she presents it to her hero-lover; but in the hour of battle he will tear away the ornaments, and use the naked edge on the enemy. (Robert Hall.)
The art of the orator undesirable in a preacher
Hipponicus, intending to dedicate a costly statue, was advised by a friend to employ Policletus, a famous workman, in the making of it; but he, being anxious that his great expense should be the admiration of all men, said that “he would not make use of a workman whose art would be more regarded than his own cost.” When in preaching the great truths of gospel salvation the enticing words which man’s wisdom teacheth are so much sought out that the art of the orator is more regarded by the hearers than the value of the truth spoken, it is no wonder that the Lord refuses to grant His blessing. He will have it seen that the excellency of the power lies not in our speech, but in His gospel. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Eloquence
“I am not eloquent.”
I. Then true eloquence may have its use.
1. To explain Divine truth.
2. To inspire men with the thought of freedom.
3. To manifest the perfection of the gift of speech.
II. Then do not condemn men who are.
III. Then do not envy those who are acknowledgod to be so. If we have not eloquence, we have some other equally valuable talent in its place.
IV. Then the Lord can use a feeble instrumentality. This will enhance the Divine glory.
V. Then words are not the chief conditions of service. Ideas, thoughts, emotions, and spiritual influences, occupy a more prominent place.
VI. Then do not grumble, but seek the Divine aid in your infirmity. He will help and bless work done for Him. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Slowness of speech
I. An infirmity.
II. A discretion.
III. A discipline. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Why was Moses not gifted with eloquence?
It might certainly be asked with propriety, why Moses, who was singled out by Providence as the great medium for bringing the wisdom of heaven down to the earth, for ever substituting Divine truth instead of human error, and who was gifted with such uncommon perfection of the mind and intellect, was denied the power of eloquence, apparently so indispensable for his extraordinary vocation. But it was an act of the sublime wisdom of the Almighty to withhold from Moses just the gift of persuasion, lest it should appear that he owed the triumph over the obstinacy of Pharaoh and the disbelief of the Israelites, not to the miracles of God and the intrinsic worth of the Law, but to the artifices and subtleties of oratory, which too often procure, even to fallacies and sophisms, an ephemeral victory. It was wisely designed that the power of God should the more gloriously shine through a humble and imperfect instrument. This is a remarkable and deeply interesting difference between the legislator of Israel and the founders of almost all other religions, to whom, uniformly, no quality is ascribed in a higher degree than the gift of eloquence. (M. M. Kalisch, Ph. D.)
Self-consciousness
Moses has now descended from the high level of the argument, and narrowed the case into one of mere human personality. He has forgotten the promise, “Certainly I will be with thee.” The moment we get away from Divine promise and forget great principles, we narrow all controversy and degrade all service. Self-consciousness is the ruin of all vocations. Let a man look into himself, and measure his work by himself, and the movement of his life will be downward and exhaustive. Let him look away from himself to the Inspirer of his life, and the Divine reward of his labours, and he will not so much as see the difficulties which may stand ever so thickly in his way. Think of Moses turning his great mission into a question which involved his own eloquence! All such reasoning admits of being turned round upon the speaker as a charge of foolish, if not of profane, vanity. See how the argument stands: “I am not eloquent, and therefore the mission cannot succeed in my hands,” is equivalent to saying, “I am an eloquent man, and therefore, this undertaking must be crowned with signal success.” The work had nothing whatever to do with the eloquence or ineloquence of Moses. It was not to be measured or determined by his personal gifts: the moment, therefore, that he turned to his individual talents, he lost sight of the great end which he was called instrumentally to accomplish. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Fluency in speech
Moses was a thinker rather than a speaker. Fluency was not his forte. He saw too much in a moment to be able to give utterance to it all at once; and so his lack of readiness in the use of language was the result of the richness of his thought, rather than of its poverty. When the bottle is full, its contents flow out less freely by far than when it is two parts empty. So, very often, the fluency of one speaker is due to the fact that he sees only one side of a subject; while the hesitancy of another is the consequence of his taking in at a glance all the bearings of his theme, and of his desire to say nothing on it that will imperil other great principles with which it is really, but not to all minds visibly, connected. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
I will be with thy mouth.
Natural infirmities in relation to moral service
I. That God does not always see fit to remove natural infirmities from those who are commissioned to important service.
1. They keep us humble.
2. They remind us of God.
3. They prompt us to prayer.
II. That God renders natural impediments effective to the clear manifestation of His power and glory.
1. Should win our submission.
2. Should gain our confidence.
3. Should inspire our praise.
III. That God so far compassionates our natural infirmities as to relieve them by congenial and efficient help.
1. Fraternal.
2. Adapted to need.
3. Constant. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
The Divine Creatorship
I. Should silence the voice of complaint under natural infirmities.
II. Should become an argument for the ready performance of any mission on which we may be divinely sent.
III. Should lean us reverently to acknowledge the sovereignty of God in the varied allotments of life. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Lessons
I. The Divine commission.
II. The Divine companionship.
III. The Divine instruction. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Speech, or dumbness, from God
I. Language is of Divine original. You may have been accustomed to consider it just as natural to man to speak as to walk; but this is a mistake. A child left to itself may learn to walk, but a child left to itself would never learn to speak; it would utter sounds, but it would never connect sounds with thoughts--it would never, that is, learn to express certain thoughts by certain sounds. It might invent some jargon of its own, but as to anything which should at all resemble even the elements of a language, and a system of sounds by which everything around us should be classified and defined, you will never think that this could be found in the accidental babblings of infancy; and however you may seek to account upon natural principles for the origin of language, we still venture to say, that unless you receive the Mosaic account of the Creation, there is no phenomenon so hopelessly inexplicable as language. Unless it be supposed that God formed man at first, and gave him the organs of speech, ay, and then taught him their use, and furnished him with words by which ideas should be expressed, language is the most unintelligible of prodigies; and you may search the universe and find nothing which you may not account for without God, if you can shut out His agency from the introduction of speech. And there is scriptural evidence of the fact, that God taught man language, or that the language first spoken was Divine in its origin. You will observe, that so soon as man was created God spake unto him; and thus the first use of words was to communicate the thoughts of God. But the thoughts of God must have been communicated in the words of God, and man could not have understood God’s words, unless he had been first taught them of God; so that when on the very outset of human existence you find conversation held between man and his Maker, you are forced to conclude, that since on no supposition could man in such a brief space have invented a language, the employed language must have been Divine, and Adam must have received from God the earliest intimations of speech.
II. Every case of inability to speak is of Divine appointment. God has meted out to us our every endowment, whether of body or of mind; we are indebted for nothing to chance, for everything to Providence; and though it were beside our purpose to inquire into the reasons which may induce God to deny to one man the sense of sight, and to another the sense of hearing, we are as much bound to recognise His appointment in these bodily defects as in the splendid gifts of a capacious memory, a rich imagination and a sound judgment, which procure for their possessor admiration and influence. And when there shall come the grand clearing up of the mysteries and discrepancies of the present dispensation, we nothing doubt that the Almighty will show that there was a design to be answered by every deformed limb, and every sightless eyeball, and every speechless tongue, and that in regard both to the individual himself and to numbers with whom he stood associated, there has been a distinct reference to the noblest and most glorious of ends, in the closing up of the inlets of the senses, or in the yielding the members to disease or contraction. The deaf and dumb child shall be proved to have acted a part in the furtherance of the purposes of God, which it could never have performed, had it delighted its parents by hearkening to their counsels and pouring forth the music of its speech; the blind man and the cripple shall be shown to have been so placed in their pilgrimage through life, that they should have been decidedly disadvantaged, the one by sight, the other by strength. “Who maketh,” then, “the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing or the blind? have not I the Lord?” Thine, O God, is the allowing upon earth the melancholy assemblage of those who seem but fractions of men; but wise and good, though unsearchable and past finding out, are all Thy ways and all Thy permissions.
III. And there are two inferences which you should draw from the facts thus established, and which we would press with all earnestness on your attention.
1. You discern, first of all, the extreme sinfulness of looking slightingly or with contempt on those who are afflicted with any bodily defect or deformity. Ridicule in such case, however disguised and softened down, is ridicule of an appointment of God; and to despise in the least degree a man because he possesses not the full measure of senses and powers, is to revile the Creator, who alone ordered the abstraction.
2. If we are indebted to God for every sense and every faculty, are we not laid under a mighty obligation to present our bodies a living sacrifice to our Maker? (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Gifts other than eloquence an element in leadership
Probably Moses stammered, as he said he was slow of speech; and was not fluent in speaking, notwithstanding all his learning. A man may be a philosopher, a statesman, may have a clear head and a strong will, a solid judgment and a great mind, and yet be destitute of any talent for speaking. It was the same with St. Paul (see 1 Corinthians 2:1-4; 2 Corinthians 10:10), who was so full of wisdom and” zeal and love, but had no eloquence. (Prof. Gaussen.)
Inspiration better than education
Speaking of art-training, Mr. Ruskin says: “Until a man has passed through a course of academy studentship, and can draw in an improved manner with French chalk, and knows foreshortening, and perspective, and something of anatomy, we do not think he can possibly be an artist. What is worse, we are very apt to think that we can make him an artist by teaching him anatomy, and how to draw with French chalk: whereas the real gift in him is utterly independent of all such accomplishments.” So the highest powers of the teacher or preacher, the power of interpreting the Scriptures with spiritual insight, of moving the hearers to earnest worship and decision, may exist with or without the culture of the schools. Learned Pharisees are impotent failures compared with a rough fisherman Peter anointed with the Holy Ghost. Inspiration is more than education. (H. O. Mackey.)
Strength not always appropriate
Professor Tyndall states as a most remarkable fact, that the waves which have up to this time been most effectual in shaking asunder the atoms of compound molecules are those of least mechanical power. “Billows,” he instructively adds, “are incompetent to produce effects which are easily produced by ripples.” It is so with us. Often the greatest of us cannot do things that the smallest and weakest can. God sends power from on high to them, and it should be our prayer that God will endue us with power from on high that we may do His work, even though we be the weakest and humblest of His servants.
God can make use of poor material
The meek Moses lost sight of the fact that God does not of necessity require good material. The paper manufacturer is not nice in the choice of his materials. He does not, writes Arnot, reject a torn or filthy piece as unfit for his purpose. All come alike to him; for he knows what he can make of them. The filthy rags can be made serviceable. So God needed not a man highly endowed with mental gifts and intellectual energies, with commanding presence and persuasive eloquence. His providence and grace could prepare Moses for his mission.
God’s biddings are enablings
The missionary John Williams once said that there were two little words which were able to make the most lofty mountains melt: “Try” and “Trust.” Moses had yet to learn the use of these words. God taught him. The sailor has to be taught that he must not look on the dark and troubled waters, but at the clear blue heavens where shines the pole-star. Moses was gazing at the surging sea of Egyptian wrath, and God taught him to direct his gaze heavenward; then to try and trust, for greater is He that is with you than all that be against you. As an early Christian writer enjoins, let us not forget--as Moses did at first--that all God’s biddings are enablings, and that it is for us not to ask the reason but to obey.